Wresting the initiative?

So now we know that another trick in a bid to hang on in Crewe is the raising of the tax threshold in order to remove some of the losers of this "10p tax band" row from the tax system altogether, in a move that will cost £2.7 billion.

The decision to take lower earners out of the tax system is a good one. However, there is one very obvious question. Why did Gordon Brown not do this in his initial budget?

OK, so part of the answer might be because he's a technocrat and an interventionist - not a man who wants to empower people through the tax system, but wants to make them grateful for such snippets as he allows them by giving their money back in expensive and fiddly ways. But I think the real reason is because he had to be bullied into it, and would never have done it otherwise. It is surely telling that this is about the fourth revision of his flagship cut in income tax in the last two months.

It has already had some effect - for instance, Frank Field has apologised and withdrawn his remarks about the Prime Minister's insanity. If I'd had Ed Balls unleashed on me to make me back down, I don't think I would have done that - I think I would have said "point proven."

Nick Robinson describes this as an attempt to wrongfoot the Tories and defuse the row. He's right in saying that it's almost certainly done the second and temporarily at least achieved the first. But he is overlooking the fact that it may be bad news in the long term. For the first time in many years, the Tories have bullied Labour into accepting one of their policies. And when that happens to an incumbent government, it's a bad sign. Remember Tony Blair's famous jibe to Major as he conceded a policy point in 1996 - "does it not show that we are the only ones who are achieving anything, even while we're in Opposition?" It hurt Major - it might hurt Brown. And that's even before we discuss how on earth it's going to be paid for at a time when the PSBR is soaring anyway. The intelligent thing to do would be for Brown to abolish some of his quangos to save some of the £167 billion he wastes on them. Oooh, look at that pig just flying over British Camp in the far distance...

But the short term may just be enough. After all, this was not really about buying off rebels - it was at all costs to shore up support for Labour in Crewe. And it should have done that. Not "HAS" done that - it depends on how cynical the electorate is. But there can be no doubt that a genuine if perhaps unrealistic fear that a safe seat might be lost has been the motive for this move. And it should be enough to stabilise Brown's rather shaky facade. He'll now almost certainly make it through to the next election. Whether he survives that, of course...

In a mess

It's been a month since I last posted - but that wasn't a quiet month for me by any stretch of the imagination. I've been marking essays, being ill, and most importantly of all, moving house. As the house I am now living in was unnocupied throughout the winter, and before that was occupied for five years by a very old lady with failing eyesight and insufficient energy to keep it in good order, I've had my hands full trying to make it habitable. It still is barely habitable, with no proper shower, a chimney that leaks water, and the guttering falling to pieces. However, I am inhabiting it, and when I can either finally get my hands on some money, or concentrate the landlord's attention on the problems for more than five minutes, hopefully I will get everything fixed. In the meanwhile I am surrounding by decay - and of course boxes, which contain various pieces of detritus from Aberystwyth that I had accumulated in the five years or so I was a permanent resident there.

This could be almost a metaphor for our luckless Prime Minister. He has now finally moved into the house of his dreams, after howling about the state the previous tenant was letting it get into for years, but doesn't seem to have quite unpacked and settled in yet, and is being buffeted by so many problems that he must be unable to think of where to start. The local election results were truly dreadful - to hold only two councils in Wales was a worse than abysmal performance (my Valleys-born mother didn't actually believe that Merthyr Tydfil and her home town of Caerphilly had slipped from Labour when I first told her) and Rhodri Morgan must be really looking forward to retirement. London was if anything worse - because it was surely only the sheer presence of "Red Ken" that stopped the Tory candidate, a bumbling chatshow host most famous for his gaffes, winning on first preferences. Then Frank Field and Ed Balls have a public slanging match on nothing in particular (officially the abolition of the 10p tax band - but surely it's not a coincidence that the former is Gordon Brown's bitterest enemy and the latter his most loyal acolyte)? If there was one man I would want to keep quiet were I in Gordon Brown's situation it is Ed Balls - whose arrogance is only matched by his naivety, rudeness, snobbbery and incompetence. Every time he goes up against Frank Field, he must cost Labour votes in the urban north. Where to start with all this woe - like me with the damaged gutters, the leaky chimney, the problematic plumbing - it might be enough to overwhelm any man and cause him to crash and do nothing.

On top of all this, there is a by-election in another few days caused by the death of independent-minded Labour backbencher Gwyneth Dunwoody (whom I would have paid tribute to at the time of her death had BT actually got round to installing the Broadband here). It is in a safe Labour seat, a working class Cheshire town (albeit with a large rural suburb) - and yet there are several punters predicting that the Tories will take it.

I'm going to be reckless here, and make two predictions:

1) Labour will hold on in Crewe, just

2) That will give Gordon Brown sufficient relief to survive the summer, and after that it will really be too late for Labour to ditch him prior to the next election, into which he will lead them but will come a poor second to the Conservatives, albeit possibly denying them an overall majority.

The reason for (1) is that I think Labour will go all out to win in Crewe - dirty tricks, class warfare, smears, libels, anything it will take. We have already seen them employ this against the Tory candidate (a Timpson, and not short of a few bob - I won't make any cheap jokes about time being on his side as well...). But it should also be noted that they have a good candidate. Tamsin Dunwoody is most definitely not her mother - she is not as independent, or as feisty. She is not a fool, however, and she is an experienced and capable politician - more so than Edward Timpson. Had she been standing in South Pembrokeshire rather than Preseli Pembrokeshire last summer, she might well have held her assembly seat. As it is, however, she will probably pick up a few non-natural Labour voters who have fond memories of her mother.

And the reason for (2) is that, without the loss of Crewe, it is hard to see how a leadership challenge could be mounted against Brown, particularly given the absence of an obvious alternative around whom dissidents could rally. That could of course be bad news for Harriet Harman, who might be deposed in favour of Jon Cruddas as a warning shot to Brown (and who, as Party Chairman and Deputy Leader, bears a huge share of the blame for Labour's recent losing streak). This could be the equivalent of Darlington in March 1983 - a very safe seat that, had Labour lost it, could have spelt the end for the leader, but once held, shored up a very shaky position. Even so, it is thought that one reason why Margaret Thatcher dissolved parliament only two months later was because she was worried that there were moves afoot in any case to replace Michael Foot (no pun intended) with the Labour politician she feared above all others - Denis Healey.

Of course, if Labour lose in Crewe, then all bets are off on (2). Gordon Brown is currently looking weak and accident prone. If a very safe seat in the industrial north goes, then there must be 70 MPs for marginal seats who would consider trying to oust him to save their own necks. But Labour on the whole at the moment seems to be in denial about its problems. When (I think it was) James Purnell said on the Election Night broadcast that Labour was still in a basically strong position and would recover because the results meant that the Tories would now come under heavy scrutiny, I felt like joining John MacDonell and holding my head in my hands at his stupid hubris - and at the alarming thought that this idiot is a Cabinet Minister. Labour is in serious difficulty - and however bad your opponents' policies, a governing party that can't govern and won't own up to its own weakness is sleepwalking to disaster - like John Major, whose opponents had no meaningful ideas at all but who still won in a landslide by default. Gordon Brown should survive, again simply because there is nobody else - but if he survives in such a damaged state purely because the alternatives are all worse, what does that say about Labour?

Still, let's not be too gloomy. The weather's sunny. And I have a nice new swivel chair for my desk, which is by a window with views across Herefordshire to the Malverns. Gordon Brown, poor man, is stuck in London. As I've said before - if I didn't dislike him, I'd feel sorry for him.

Being Badgered

Farmers in Wales - for instance, the blogosphere's own Glyn Davies - are rightly very happy at the moment. Because, finally, a Rural Affairs minister has had the gumption to back them against the mighty badger lobby, and ordered a badger cull.

Admittedly, this news should be greeted with some caution. For a start, nobody seems to have yet decided when, or where, or how this cull should take place - three necessary prerequisites before it can actually go ahead. Also, it's referred to as "a pilot scheme" - which is something of a puzzle given that the overwhelming evidence we have is of a causal link between badgers and tuberculosis in cattle (despite what has been said by the badger lobby). Why, then, do we need a pilot when there have been studies in Devon, Ireland and other parts of Europe? I suspect this is probably to reasssure whatever random group of badger supporters is out there at the moment that this is being kept under tight control, and is not an unrestricted war on badgers.

It might also, in fairness, be because one of the earlier studies (the Krebs report) suggested that while culling badgers caused a reduction in TB in the areas of intensive culling, it could cause an increase in TB outside that area. Worse, a limited, targeted cull of small hotspots tended to be counter-productive, causing a substantial spike in the number of cases. Both of these are presumably because badgers get scared off areas where culls are in progress, and in doing the sensible thing and running away are actually spreading the infection. These findings were seized on by animal welfare groups as evidence that there is no link between TB in cattle and badgers. Sorry, but I'd conclude the opposite - it shows that there is a link, because a variation in one factor causes a change in the other. Quite how strong the link is, or what other factors come in, is a matter that of course still isn't proven. Foxes and mice - particularly dormice - have also been linked to TB in cattle in the past, and should not be thought to be in the clear this time.

I will, from my own experience, put one myth to rest right here. There is often the glib answer from the ALF and its front organisations, when asked what does cause TB in cattle, that the blame lies with "bad farming practices." In other words, the irresponsible movement, sale and proximity of quarantined livestock. As daft notions go, I fear that one is right up there with the idea that Elvis was abducted by aliens. It's more than possible that it accounts for a small proportion of cases - I've known enough thoroughgoing crooks in the farming community in my time not to be stupid enough to think that they are all noble, selfless saints. But in rural Gloucestershire, where I was born, there were mysterious cases of TB in herds that had been closed for more than 40 years (by closed, I mean no new livestock brought in). Investigation of the farmland invariably found a new badger sett. Long before Krebs, I was happy in my own mind that there was a strong causal link between badgers and TB in cattle. And living in the worst TB blackspot in Europe, the infamous Longhope Triangle, it was a big issue - one I had to chew over a lot. That was the positive evidence against this theory of bad farming practices. The negative was of course - such farming methods in that part of the world had been largely unchanged since the 1940s - why had they not caused a TB explosion before? And, above all, why did it coincide with a sudden surge in badger numbers when they became a protected species?

Arguments like these didn't stop the protests when a badger cull was started, of course. But it was notable that the local badger groups were much quieter, and a lot of the protestors had to be bussed in from Cheltenham, Gloucester or even Oxford. Or, as one of the local badger league put it, "Why don't they understand that we want healthy badgers and healthy cattle?" A cull might give him that - wiping out the diseased badgers, if it is done thoroughly, will allow healthier badgers to move in.

That leads on to a further argument - the welfare one. Let's not forget, most of the badgers to be slaughtered (and here I side with Glyn - let's not over-use the word "cull" so that it sounds euphemistic) will themselves have TB. I don't recommend having TB. It's a horrible, painful, intractable and in badgers invariably fatal disease. I reckon most of them would take being shot over coughing up their lungs. So let's not get too carried away by sentiment on behalf of the badgers here in any case - they're doomed in the short term anyway, one way or another.

Once all the false arguments, the wrong assumptions and the verbiage has been stripped of the arguments against a badger cull, it boils down basically too "they're lovely animals, they're rare and they should be protected." For the last argument, I recommend the article of Mr. Ross Clark, who demolishes the notion that they are either rare or deserving of protection (although I don't agree with him when he says that badgers are a worse pest than squirrels - squirrels are disease-ridden, invasive, aggressive little menaces, and there's millions of them). For the lovely animals, yes they are lovely. Handsome, frolicsome, and fantastically intelligent, they are by far my favourite of the pig family. They're also vicious (I've seen 'em fight) and diseased. They are a pest. Pests have to be controlled. If that means slaughter, well, it's not ideal, but it's a price I can live with.

Kudos should go to the Minister concerned for this decision, my local AM Elin Jones, whom I, hardly a natural Plaid supporter, was glad to vote for last May. This isn't going to win her friends in a powerful and ruthless lobby on behalf of the badgers - so it must have taken real courage. But I think it is the right decision.

Lewis Hamilton

I must make a somewhat shocking confession here, given the legions of British fans of the above named person and the veneration of him as a sporting icon. I have never been much of a fan of Lewis Hamilton. I think that he is a capable racing driver in a brilliant car. He seems arrogant, and occasionally dishonest and hypocritical. For instance, the bad blood between him and Alonso last year began when Alonso was penalised for blocking Hamilton in the pit lane and ruining his chance of an extra lap. Hamilton bleated rather a lot about that. He never once mentioned that he had deliberately spoiled Alonso's fast lap in the same session by refusing to quit the racing line. It's not surprising Alonso disliked him from there on - leaving aside the nip-and-tuck for the championship.

However, it's always heartening to be proven wrong on such matters. Today, after a lot of hot air was blown off yesterday by McLaren about how Alonso deliberately engineered an accident to ruin Hamilton's race in Bahrain yesterday, Hamilton has admitted that he didn't think Alonso blocked him, and has said, simply: "It's racing."

Ron Dennis has also back-tracked on his wilder comments of yesterday, but still refuses to exonerate Alonso, saying that he was trying to "second guess" Hamilton and implying that therefore he was where he shouldn't have been. OK feller, he was on the race track, in a corner, on the gas, in front of your bloke. Where exactly in that lot is somewhere where he shouldn't have been? Possibly the last - but after Hamilton's lousy start, that was his fault, not Alonso's.

I went and watched that clip repeatedly on ITV's website, and I could certainly see no evidence that Alonso deliberately slowed. If that had been shown to me, as a standard road accident, I would have put it down to the rear driver not paying attention while too close to the car in front. It seems a bit too schoolboy error for a top driver, but it's possible that Hamilton was working on an assumption rather than a visual contact, and his assumption was wrong. We've all done it. Nobody was injured, and it has at least given Hamilton experience of driving a useless Formula One car - which he may need to draw on if he is to win this world championship from so far behind Ferrari and BMW.

I suppose that the main reason I have never been sold on Hamilton is that I don't think very much of McLaren as a team. There's always been a whiff of sulphur around some of their dealings - the espionage scandal last year being just the latest in a long and inglorious line (a rather naughty effort to introduce four wheel drive comes to mind as well). Of course, they're not the only ones (Ferrari are by far the worst offenders in that regard) but they tend to snivel more than the rest when they get caught. They did that here. Maybe Hamilton's willingness to own up to his own errors will encourage them to change. I never thought I'd say this, but his honesty and willingness to own up sets a great example.

The Basket Case of Africa

I try to avoid blogging on matters outside the UK where my knowledge is limited. However, Zimbabwe, which is a humanitarian catastrophe, an economic disaster and a political farce, is maybe a bit of a special case.

It is now blindingly obvious to everybody, with the possible exception of Robert Mugabe himself, that he is no longer wanted as President by the people of Zimbabwe. It is therefore inconceivable that he could have won the presidential election, and it is indeed difficult to conceive how he could not have lost it outright. If he has managed to force a run-off, it can only have been because of massive fraud.

It is also blindingly obvious that there was massive fraud, because otherwise it is difficult to believe that there would not have been much greater overt fraud and intimidation at the ballot box. Logically, Mugabe had fixed enough ballots to ensure that he won outright beforehand (or so he thought). It seems, however, that his support has dipped so far that he wildly underestimated the number of fake papers needed to beat Tsvangirai, and rather embarrassingly even came in behind him, with the net result that everyone is trying to work out what the hell to do next. Losing an election that you have carefully rigged in your own favour is perhaps the ultimate indication of public loathing.

Mugabe was not always a brutal dictator, and Zimbabwe, until a handful of years ago, was a rare African success story. But defeat in a referendum back in 2000 seemed to sour him, and then followed his apocalyptic land grab, which turned Zimbabwe's thriving agrarian economy into the sort of wilderness that hasn't existed in many centuries - possibly, since the Stone Age when the population was tiny by comparison and existed on a hunter-gatherer basis. Food vanished from the shelves, inflation soared, life expectancy plummeted and now Zimbabwe might fairly be called a humanitarian disaster zone.

The main thrust of this post is to direct people to another blog, that of Sokwanele, a Zimbabwean "Civic Action Support Group" (with a tip of the hat to Liberal England for pointing it out). It makes grim reading. It sounds incredibly trite to say that they're not forgotten. But if it helps at all, I constantly think about Zimbabwe, and I've no doubt that many others do as well. And when Mugabe goes, I shall be glad.

But I'm not going to get the champagne out yet. While I snuffed the air when there were rumours of talks with the opposition, it has since occurred to me that Mugabe led a tough guerilla war against two of the most dangerous and ruthless powers in Africa - colonial Britain, and Ian Smith's de facto apartheid regime. If he could come through fifteen years of that, it seems unlikely that even at 84, he's going to let a little thing like a democratic defeat stop him. Perhaps Britain shares a big portion of the blame for creating him, both through the circumstances of that war and for not blocking his ascent to power in 1980, when Muzoroweta or Nkomo could have ousted him with a little help. But usually such interference only stores up a trouble, rather than removes it - something that should have served as a lesson to colonialist powers everywhere (and one they persistently refused, and are still refusing (see China and Tibet) to learn).

I'm still hoping that he'll accept defeat. And if he does, I'll consider that good news. But these are uncertain times for Zimbabwe. For what it's worth, I offer them the very best of luck.

Happy Easter

It's a busy day for me today - March of Witness at 11.15, then the Three Hours vigil in Holy Trinity from 12, and then when that's over some proof-reading work to do back here. However, I imagine it's a cinch compared to carrying a cross having been beaten black and blue, being forced to wear a crown of thornstems, and then finally being publicly crucified. So I'm not going to complain about missing lunch!

After today, when I am not busy with Easter preparations, I shall be busy with thesis. And then after Easter I shall be away for several days, organising my house move. So I don't think there will be any posting on this blog of my own thinking until the beginning of April.

As a result, may I wish all readers of this blog a very Happy Easter, with the following verse from my favourite Easter hymn:

"Now let the heavens be joyful,
And Earth her song begin,
The round world keep high triumph,
And all that is therein;
Let all things seen and unseen
Their notes of gladness blend'
For Christ the Lord is risen -
Our joy that hath no end!!

Casting the beam out of mine own eye...

I've always thought of Good Friday as the holiest day in the Christian year, even ahead of Easter Day - after all, dying in a horrible way "for love of those that loved him not" was in many ways a more impressive display of love from Jesus than rising again from the dead - particularly as according to Matthew he had no particular wish to do it (which is understandable). Also, of course, it was a necessary pre-requisite for that even more shattering miracle three days later.

So it is rather appropriate that today I am obliged to eat humble pie of my own. Last night I received an email from a friend of mine in Carmarthenshire, somebody whom I like, respect and completely trust, and he was sharply critical of this blog and my comments on the current furor over the Bishop, saying that they had had an adverse effect on matters. I have no idea whether or not he realised he was talking to the blogmeister, but he is one of the few people who knows me well enough to work it out from such clues as I have left, so it is more than possible. If he did not, perhaps that simply makes his comments all the more damning. In light of what he has told me, I would like to publicly apologise to the Reverend Will Strange and the Reverend Peter Jones for the following:

1) My imputation of their motives. I accept that they are genuinely worried about these rumours, and not acting out of spite or malice towards the Bishop, or out of prejudice against women priests.

2) My belief that it was one of them who has been giving these anonymous interviews to the press. I now realise that it is not one of them.

3) Unreservedly and completely for any personal remarks whatsoever that may have (or have) offended them on this blog while I was under a different impression.

However, that said, I would like to make it clear that I still think the following:

1) That they have acted unwisely in making such a public display of no-confidence in the Bishop, when if they were certain of their facts they could have gone to the Archbishop with their concerns a while back, possibly as part of a deputation. I can hardly, in light of my own actions, roundly criticise them for that under Matthew 7:1. But I think it remains a fair observation.

2) That they should not claim that they have the support of the whole diocese, because they most certainly do not (this was one of the things that so annoyed me when I wrote my earlier post). In fact, alarmingly, it looks as though the diocese is split 50/50 on this issue, which is the worst possible outcome.

3) That the anonymous troll in question, who has been behaving like the worst sort of tabloid muckraker, talking of boycotts, assignations and lay unrest, is despicable and should be thoroughly ashamed of his/herself. I do not know whether it is the person who has been trolling on my blog and on A Blogspate under the name of "Caerwedros", but it seems possible. Whoever it is may see themselves as a whistleblower. This is not the case, for the simple reason that a whistleblower would go to the Archbishop with proofs, not to the anticlerical press with gossip served up with the sauce of malice.

So whither next? Well, the most important thing is that we continue to offer our support and affection for the Bishop - whether we believe him to be guilty or innocent, he certainly needs and deserves emotional support at a very difficult time that might well be coming to seem an impossible one. But the only real way to clear the air now that everyone is busy taking sides is for a proper inquiry led by Archbishop Barry. If Bishop Carl is happy to go along with that, then speaking as one of his supporters, I would be happy to abide by the outcome, and so I hope would those pressing for such an inquiry. I accept Bishop Carl's word that these rumours are unfounded, and therefore do not see what the problem would be with an investigation. Certainly I think it has now gone too far to be just forgotten about, otherwise that anonymous personage would be back to the best pals in the media shouting about cover-ups - something the press is always mad keen to write about.

As a lay member of the diocese, I will be writing to the Archbishop (at the behest of the Vicar of Kidwelly, who is going to ask all such supporters of the Bishop among the laity to do so) to offer my continued support to the Bishop and my acceptance of his word. However, that is to show that it is not true that the Bishop has completely lost the support of the laity over a few rumours and bad press stories, which would obviously leave him fatally damaged even if a full, impartial, independent inquiry chaired by Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama cleared him. It does not mean I think a full inquiry would be a bad idea or should be ruled out. If such an inquiry came out with a different result from the one I expect, I'd look an idiot. Well, I've looked an idiot before and I certainly will look an idiot again, so I could live with that. Fear of a result other than the one I expect to get should be no reason to fear the establishing of the truth. As it is written in John, "the truth shall make you free." Once we have that truth, whatever it is, we can move on. That's particularly true for Bishop Carl himself, who seems likely to be dogged by rumour unless cleared in such a way.

I don't issue apologies often on this blog - I think this is only the second in the eight months I have been running it. I hope that Will Strange and Peter Jones will accept it. If they have any response to make on their own part, I would welcome hearing from them, and would be willing to publish it on this blog.